MODS PLEASE LOCK - MOVED TO NEW FORUM :D!!!

Spraypaint would make a better finish on the fittings - nice work

 

I really prefer the dark fittings. I'd watch for leaks though, in case you removed a liiittle too much material when you re-tapped those holes. Chrome fitings may also be an option. Here are a few spots that show black poly barbs in case you decide that way.

http://www.thomasregister.com/olc/72726029/adapter3.htm
http://www.aquasales.com/asstore/hosebarb.html
http://www.eldonjames.com/html/adapter.html

Cheers

 

I've done the old "blow real friggin hard" test with the barbs in and so far, no problems. No bubbles in the soapy water I sprayed around the fittings. As I said in the update, the eheim barb was much, much more shalow and sealed with an o-ring so it makes sense that to use a deeper fitting I'd need to retap.

Good find on the black barbs. Did you notice that you second link says ASStore?

Re: spraypaint: will not stick to polypropelene for too long, and may flake off in the water (which would be bad, mmk.)

Thanks for the feedback everybody.

And as far as this mod dating back till last year, it's actually worse than that. I did a transfer of this after I started the log on ArsTechnica... so believe it or not this has been going for close to 3 years (ACK!!!!). I bought the case in 2002, the rad in same year. I didn't start logging my progress until 2003, though as I didn't have a digital camera. so everything I did up until then was from memory and/or crappy web cam pix and or from my then GF/now wife's digicam. I'm as bad as nexxo, if not worse!

Good things come to those who wait

 

if you die it a few more times it should go black, but they still look good

 

Hello,

I'm new to these forums, and I hope to see the finished product.That is the cooliest looking computer I have ever seen.
Keep up the good work.

Go with the black ones, it matches.

 

Part I: When bad things happen to good motherboards - northbridge hoops tore out

One morning I go down into my workshop to grab a few things before I head off to work, only to discover that my northbridge block (aquacomputer twinplex) had fallen off the board. Upon further inspection, it had ripped out and took the mounting hoop with it!!


This where it used to live.


So after some solder-sucking action, I was able to force a new hoop, made out of the legs of a safety needle, through the board. I soldered the new hoop in place and left the excess sticking out and up like so.


Then I slid a piece of prototyping circuit board over the legs (copper contact side up, of course.)


Then I folded the legs over on themselves (which required a bit of force since they're steel) and soldered them closed.


There's no FRIGGIN WAY that the block can pull these out.

Part II: Better living through acyrlic (reservior)
This is not your typical reservior. It needed to supply a 3/4" outlet barb for my pump, and combine the 4 smaller loops. It mounts vertically, so in most of these shots, it's sitting on it's front - the part that faces the front of the case.

The two sides (front and back) of the reservior that I designed a few posts back, with the 'inspection port' covers placed.


IPS Weld-On #4: Strong in 15 minutes, full cured in 48 ours. Awful smell.


Syringe w\ 18 gauge needle to apply the weld-on. Weld-on is capilliary cement, meaning it draws it self into the joint through capilliary action. Remember kids, I'm a professional


All glued up. You can see around the edges where the plastic has melted and welded together.


The side wall pieces were laser cut, but the laser left a bit of a kerf, and as you can see the edges are not at a 90 degree angle from the sides, as indicated by the arrows.


Nothing a little help from the 1/8" 4 flute carbide endmill can't solve.






All true'd up now. Flipped them over and did the other side in the same way.


clamp clamp mushroom, mushroom.


Front edge lined up.


Injecting Weld-on into the joint.


Clamp another side on and tape it in the corner so it doesn't shift. Not a lot of pressure is required with weld-on, tape and a light weight or clamping pressure is plenty. No gorillas need apply.


Other side, more tape. The strips pull it toward the middle, while another strip holds it to the side. They fight against each other, and put downward pressure on the joint.

 

Tape down the end cap and clamp it on the sides.


The melted-like appearence of the joint once cured. Weld-on is a solvent-cement, meaning that it softens the surfaces and, as it dries/cures/evaporates/ the now semi-fluid surfaces are permanently joined.


Side 1 all done.


Post-hold-water-testing. No problems.


1" Diameter fill-hole cap from Mcmaster-Carr. 3/4" NPT thread, black polypropylene.


Center divider placed...


...looks a bit high, doesn't it? The water path, in green, from return to pump inlet. The space between t he top of the drain plug and the top of the divider is too small. The purpose of the divider is so that bubbles can't go immediately back into the pump intake. This res did a beautiful job of bleeding all the air out of the system in under 2 minutes!


Why don't we take off some material? Material to be removed is highlighted in green.


Halfway through. The endmill didn't have enough cutting surface to do the whole thing at once.


Action shot.


Smoothing the end, all done.


Shortend divider in place and glued up.


Top clamped on, no shortage of clamps here.




All done, just not installed. This is the "Front" because it faces the front of the case. A bit dusty in this shot... :shrug:


This is the "Back" - it faces into the main compartment of the case.


Front view: installed in the rear of the top-front bays of the case, looking back.


Back view: installed in the rear of the top-front bays of the case, looking frontwards.


Filler cap just barely fits vertically... Phew!

 

Part III: Replumber's Crack
I've been itching for this since I ordered the Storm/G5... plumbing it, as well as my custom 4-way splitter, custom res, and custom-mounted Radeon twinplex block back into the loop for some massive parallel loop action...

Storm/G5!! (that's pure-silver (not copper) version.) We'll see more of it in a bit. This version has better performance and a different design from the Original Storm/G4 and Swiftech Storm/G4. Plus it's just so... damn... sexy.


Yummy.


Parallel loops are starting to come together. Heatercore is installed again, with foam tape around the edges to deaden vibration between it and the not-yet-installed-in-this-picture shroud. Huge thanks to Knipex, Dr. Fibbles and Pug/Infidel for their help sourcing some of the watercooling gear: Blocks, Tubing, Fittings...


Parallel loop fully plumbed! Don't worry about the ugly grey foam the pump was sitting on, it's temporary.


Black 8mm tubing courtesy of Pug/Infidel returning to the reservior. The loops split in the splitter (seen further down in this update and in previous updates) and then combine again here.


All parallel loops return-plumbed. Look really closely and you can see the one that comes up from the silentstar HDD enclosure. The fitting that the silentstar returns to was later replaced with a 90 degree fitting, due to the extremely tight fit between the reservior and the end of the fan shroud + fans.


Everything reinstalled: Radeon 9800 pro, 3com gigabit copper ethernet, Adaptec Ultra160 SCSI adapter, Pioneer SCSI slot-DVD, HP SCSI CDRW, 2x Ultra160 10K RPM SCSI HDDs.


Neat shot of the G5 amidst all the other various-size (6mm ID, 1/2" ID, 3/4" ID) tubing.


Shot from the back w\ everything installed.


Tight fit going back into the res! Don't mind the slightly-pinched looking line, it's just there if I ever need to drain excess off of the reservior.


Northbridge on custom super-strong mounts.


Splitter installed. It's mounted through the back plate of the mobo with an 8/32" hex-cap bolt. And no, you're not seeing things, it's not vertical. I mounted it at an angle w\ 1 bolt instead of straight up w\ 2 bolts to prevent the tubing from kinking. I had less room between the top of the splitter and the bottom of the radiator fans than I thought. No problem, though. 6mm ID tubes leave the splitter and go to the northbridge, silenstar HDD cooler, and radeon 9800.


All my front-panel connections bound together and installed: 2x firewire and 2xUSB 2.0.


Twinplex on Radeon 9800 pro. The twinplex takes up less room and puts less stress on the video card than the old danger den block ever did.


Massive 3/4" Inlet barb. Yes, it's WHITE, I know. Wait till you see the night shots in the next update and you'll find out why.


Silentstar w\ full ultra160, power, and water plumbed in.


Drain hose for the reservior. Thanks for the plug-and-cool unions Knipex!


The bolts that hold the reservior in. They don't screw into anything, but the go in and press on the reservior to force it against the side of the drive cage. That and sitting on top of one of the optical drives keeps it quite secure, although it doesn't move, even if you do remove the optical drive.


Temperature sensor board for Speedfan (MAX1668 based) installed w\ probes for reservior, GPU temp.

 

Part IV: It was a dark and stormy night

Midway into leak testing the loop in my lab, I noticed that there was water on top of the northbridge block... I blamed this on a bad seal on the twinplex. I got out the metric allen wrenches and tightend the top down a bit. It still leaked. I tightend it some. it still leaked. Well WTF?? I put my finger up under the storm's universal mounting plate to find out that it was the STORM that was leaking, not the twinplex on the northbridge. WTF *@#*@(%* I said!

It turns out that the problem seems to be that the o-ring groove on the bottom part of the storm was milled too deep, or the supplied o-ring wasn't fat enough. See how the o-ring doesn't sit up above the groove at all? Well, that's bad.


Not having any other o-rings (save for the ones for my paintball gun) around, I pulled out the silicon-II and smeared it into the o-ring groove to build up a bit of a base so the o-ring had something to raise it up, and something to seal against on the bottom.




Half an hour later the stuff was non-tacky, and I reinstalled the o-ring. Now it sticks up! that's GOOD. I reassembled the block, and have had no leaks since.



Part V: Overclocking again

Now that I'm done leak testing, I've begun stress testing my new 2.8C SL6WJ P4. Since I've still got my mobile 3.06 P4 to fall back on (which will do 3.56 GHz) I've decided to go whole-hog and break the 1.7V barrier on v-core. 1.9V set in bios yields 1.86 w\ less ripple than when it was set to 1.675. Seems the higher you set Vcore, the less it droops... This seems to be in line with the Vdroop mods for the IC7, wihch lessen the droop but raise Vcore. All of that leads to this:



That's all for this time, folks

 

Outstanding work!
I really like how the resevour came out! Nice and clean.

Can't wait for more!

 

LOve the update. Carefull with the northy.

 

I think it's headed for destruction. It was a pull from a dead dell... I'd love to get my fingers on a 3.0 northy or a prescott, or better yet a 3.2EE prescott core. I've still 3.06 mobile that'll work very well (3.56 rock stable) if I kill this one.

Or maybe I'll throw it back in the dell box and see if it's got warranty

Thanks!

 

is your temp sensor board a made up thing or an off the shelf item?
i wanted to find a hardware fan controller with temp sensing, but i doubt that such a thing exists especially with the abilty to control individual fans, speedfan would be the next option but i thought it only worked with motherboard sensors.

 

DAMN, thats nice, i havent seen anything like that for ages, very nice job, but could you tell me where you got that milling bit, that would make my life alot easier sometimes

 

Like I've said before: this mod is pure class.

I would visit the Innovatek website, and also KustomPC.co.uk which sells a very interesting series of digital baybusses with software control.

 

Custom... I've got one more blank board (no chips on it yet) but they're time consuming to make and build. And they may (or may not) work with your board. See the WizD Forums for more: http://www.wizdforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2032

The endmill is a 4-flute carbide tipped one, bought in a set for $30 or so from Grizzly tools. www.grizzly.com for you all, but there main showroom for the company (and one of the largest tool stores on the planet) is about an hour from my house Any decent industrial tooling shop should carry stuff like this, though.

@Nexxo: you repeatedly make my day.

Thaks for the replies so far!

 

Hey, Penn State that's cool. That's where my girlfriend goes and I almost went.

 

Sweet, I love the REz you made man, its really pimptacular. +***** i loves it

 

For using an endmill like that on plastic, is it necessary to have a very powerful drill press and a heavy duty chuck?

 

awsopme job i love it!